Pay him no mind, he hated LOTR because it was such ligher fare than the Silmarillion. If Tolkien hadn't sold out to the Publishers we'd be reading all of his works in their original Quenya.
Re:Is this book a "The Elegant Universe for Dummie
on
The Fabric of the Cosmos
·
· Score: 2, Informative
The End of Time is also available in paperback. I never managed to get though more than 4 chapters, but Barbour has some very intriguing ideas about time, and I've seen him mentioned along with Loop Quantum Gravity, which is a good sign.
Hyperspace was written before TEU, and suffers from age a bit. It was written before Witten unleashed M-Theory on everyone (or just after) I read it immediately after TEU so I bored me, the rehash of Relativity and QM can get a bit tedious in these books unless you spice it up like Greene does.
Three Roads to Quantum Gravity looks promising, and details String Theory's main competitor on the Quantum Gravity front, Loop Quantum Gravity. I picked it up, but couldn't get into it.
I've read Hawking and a few others, but I've never been able to get into things from the 'classical' side of the equasion. Feynman is REALLY difficut to get into, his prose just doesn't flow like Greene's. Perhaps I'm a mass consumer and so esoteric physisits don't appeal to me as authors.
Yes there is new ground covered in TFOTC, specifically more coverage of the 'braneworld' theory of strings, a large secton on cosmology, inflation, and what that means, as well as a section at the end detailing a little bit of what the future holds and the possibility for experimental evidence of string theory. For me this didn't amount to much more than what I'd already read in 'Faster than the Speed of Light' and Scientific American, but it was good to have it in context. Some of the stuff on quantum mechanics was also better than TEU.
For me it was worth the buy, but as I stated I'm a physics geek. (And I could pick it up at my local B&N)
Actually... should the universe eventually be saturated with entropy how could time flow? There's no need for a big crunch, but if the universe reaches a level of disorder saturation (such as Black Holes do) would time continue to flow? It would continue to exist of course, as the past is immutable, but would it still flow at maximum entropy?
Yes and no. You could think of this as "The Elegant Universe" Rev 2. It is dumbed down a bit (not terribly) but I think it more comes from Greene refining his delivery than from deliberately appealing to a lower intellect. If you don't like thinking about Bart Simpson racing a beam of light it's not for you. Real stick up brainiacs might see the alegories that Greene uses as 'dumbing down', but I find them amusing and a good way to suck geeks into his world.
Re:Worth reading if you've read Elegant Universe?
on
The Fabric of the Cosmos
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Hrm... Possibly. This is, in many ways a lighter read when it comes to M/String theory, not delving so deeply into Kalabi-Yau transformations and the other of Green's work. If you're looking for more in-depth on Strings this might not be the work for you.
It's a better overview than TEU was, Green's prose is more refined, but the level of the target audience is lower as well.
I think the point is valid though. A tractor is a tractor is a tractor. Just like we're still using a mouse to point to icons on a screen. At that level the analogy works. Computing really hasn't changed much in the last 20 years. Yeah Apple was the first to do the whole Mouse/GUI thing, but there's been no real change to that paradigm since the first Mac.
This is an open letter to all the friends and family that back me into corners at family gatherings, or try to call me late in the evening seeking help with a computer problem. Do us both a big favor and go buy a Mac.
When a member of 'the family' knows something about a technical subject the rest of the family turns to that person for advice. I can accept that. I have no problem offering advice. I have watched my father diplomatically give advice on automobiles (he is a mechanic) for more than thirty years now. Yes, sometimes you can get some free service; it all depends on the schmoozing. The best line I ever learned from my father is: "Sounds like it really needs some work, bring it by the shop tomorrow and I'll be happy to look at it." The connotation here being that he'll work on it at work. That usually throws the cheapskates off.
I don't fix personal computers for a living or I'd use the same line. I'm a System Administrator, and while servicing desktop windows machines is part of my job on occasion, for the most part I deal with large servers and institutional workstations, i.e. not something that has the latest version of 'Deer Hunter' on it. Even so, yes I CAN work on PC's, however, I work on computers all day long and really would prefer to NOT do that all night as well. Well, okay, so I'd prefer to work on my OWN computer at night.
Make both of our lives easier, as well as help me deal with those embarrassing pauses in conversation at family functions and buy yourself a Mac rather than a PC. I guarantee you'll be happier and if you have problems I'll be more willing to help you.
You see, what the sales person at Dell, or Best Buy, or CompUSA isn't telling you is what you get with that wonderfully less expensive PC. They don't tell you about the mountains of marginally compatible or functioning software. They don't tell you about the flood of Internet spyware programs that are out there that will make your PC unstable. They don't tell you about the legion of virus writers out there, right now, that want to turn your nice, inexpensive PC into a gateway for unsolicited e-mail. They don't tell you about the bouncing around you'll get from the manufacturer about support.
Yes, it is true that Macs cost more than the el-cheapo special at Best Buy. It's also true that in three years you can sell your Mac for a reasonable sum on EBay, while you won't be able to donate the PC to your schools because it's so out of date. Yes it's true that there's less of a selection of software for Macs, but how many $10 software titles that aren't worth the CD's their printed on do you need? Yes, Macs don't have the breadth of games available, but if you're buying a computer based solely on the availability of games wouldn't you be better off buying an XBox? Yes, maybe even Macs are a bit slower, but you don't buy a Corvette and drive at 120 miles per hour do you? What do you need with that speed? As long as it keeps up with you what's the issue?
Here's the thing, I know it's been said before, but it can't be stressed enough, Macs just work. Do you have any idea the hoops you have to jump through to get a slightly out of date, or a slightly ahead of it's time piece of equipment working with Windows? It can be a nightmare. With a Mac, as long as you've bought something that says it will work with a Mac, you just plug it in and go. Unless your children are going to be Computer Scientists there's no real reason that they HAVE to HAVE a PC at home. 'Because that's what the schools use,' is not a good excuse. Do you know WHY the schools use PC's? Because Dell gives them a BIG discount and schmooze the school administrators.
So if after all of this you still feel like you need to buy that Best Buy el-cheapo job I'll give you this last bit of advice: Add in the cost of a Linksys firewall, the latest Norton Anti-Virus (remember that that anti-virus cost is a YEARLY fee), the hours of frustration you're g
The other quesion that this all raises is - what makes you think that this is ANY different than all the sysadmins who love linux/unix and have done so for years?
First, yes there are SysAdmins that swear by Linux on Intel. I know several. They spend time tinkering with their set-up to get it 'just right' have spam assassin and proc mail and a bajillion other little things that they 'have' to have. No question.
However, I also know SysAdmins that could give a rip about dealing with all of Linux's little gotchas. Sleep and network handeling (after sleep) come immediately to mind. Bottom line, as has been stated MANY times before... Linux beats everything for TCO if you time is worthless. Try installing an RSS reader on Linux, you've either got to go through the configure, make, make install hastle, or find the RPM, make sure you're libraries are up to date and install from there. If you're really lucky you can just emerge the package and pooft there it is. Try it on a Mac. Double click the installer, drag from disk image to hard drive. Done. How do you uninstall it? Drag it to the trash.
The value in Macs isn't in the hardware (though the quietness of the G5 is very impressive) it's in the OS. There's power under there, but for the most part you don't HAVE to pull back the covers to get something to work. *THAT'S* the segment that the Mac is making inroads with in the Technoarti realm. The people, like me, that say: "I work on computers all day long, I fight with vendors and libraries, and users. I want a machine that *JUST WORKS*, I don't want to fuck around with sendmail.cf on my own fuckin' laptop!
You'd be surprised how many SysAdmins (the Elders I'm thinking) have this view.
The question that market analysts don't seem to be asking is what segments of the market is Apple growing in?
I've seen Apple making headways into the SysAdmin space. Not as servers (though XRaid perhaps will) but as personal workstations. Just this week two die hard Sun and VMS people have decided that their next workstations should be Macs. Replacing Sun Stations.
*This* is the important bit that is getting glossed over. Apple is making inroads with the Technoarti in companies. UNIX Sysadmins at the top of the totem pole have been crying for a UNIX laptop for years and now Apple is giving it to them. One Java developer recently quoted in JDJ remarked: "I use a Mac, it's like Linux with class and QA." (or something close to)
Macs are quickly becoming the status symbols of the technical shamans in the backroom. It's not hard to imagine that from there the jump to the CIO and the board room is not far off.
This is what looking at gross marketshare misses. Apple is front-loading the desire for Macs in IT. If they can couple it at the right time (once they've penetrated into the SysAdmin/CIO segment) with inexpensive corporate-type desktops... the world could change quickly.
If Apple can appeal on the resilience to worms/viruses and bring TCO value to corporations the future is bright.
Excuse me? This could be GREAT! Think about it. If this catches on (which I dubious about considdering how well IPV6 took off) the upgrade cost will go into the pockets of companies like Cisco and Nortel, and the physical/virtual change over will be done by people carrying new switches/routers and deploying new servers to run on this network, not farmed out to comanies half a world away.
Let's hope they succeed. This could do for CCNE's what y2k did for Cobal programmers.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but I wear headphones in cube-land because all of the other conversations going on around me are distracting, especially the ones in foreign languages.
Background noise pulls at attention, at least it does for me. Now, I have been known to listen to 'pink' noise instead of music just to drown out the conversations. This actually works better than Music often times, but is just hell on my mild tinitus.
I think the anti-social aspects are a bit over played as well. Ask the people you see wearing headphones in the office, or in public if they are extaverts or intraverts. I would bet a small sum of money that the majority of people that are 'enhansing their personal space' are introverts. I, as an introvert, don't see anything wrong with this. We are not flawed because we are anti-social, we are just different.
PREACH IT BORTHA! As someone who has slowly been sucked into supporting FinApps (Er... E-Business Suite) I finally figured out what that smell was when I dug into iAS. FinApps isn't a pile of mud. It's a pile of... nitrogen rich mud.
Ummmm.... Super-Weapons utilizing untested systems like say... Apache, or the Abrahms? Like the Falcon? Untested Superweapons like the M-16?
None of these were incremental improvements over their predesesors. Apache's helmet mounted sighting system was glitchy in the beginning, the optics were as well. Abrahms was the first MBT to utilize a turbine engine, the second to use Cobham reactive armor, and the sighting and stabilization system was new as well. Falcon was the first 'Electric jet' in production and the flight control systems were a little jittery, and the flight stick it self (originally a 'force stick') had to be redesigned to move. The M-16 was the development of Eugene Stoner that used a smaller round than the US Army wanted and suffered from inferior powder in early production models, as well as jamming and fowling do to issues with the chamber (and the powder).
All of these weapons systems took some risks and perservered. They weren't incrementally better than their predesessors, they were significanly improved through the use of untested systems.
We see what incremental change gets us. It gets us Apache Longbow, it gets us Strike Eagle. It gets us the M-60 (MBT) it gets us the M-16A2. Yes, they're all better than their predesessors, but they don't represent the paradigm shift that the base models did. Commanche promised to do for Attack/Scout Helicopters what the M1 did for Main Battle Tanks. Instead we're stuck with the M1A2 of helicopter gunships for the forseeable future, all the while the airframes continue to accumulate hours at an unprescedented rate.
I've learned to support Rummy on his grand transformation vision, but it's getting a little hard to stomache while the air-frames and equipment that the greatest military in the world uses to protect us turns into museum pieces.
Probably the whole reason the Army ever came up with attack helicopters is that they are forbidden to operate fixed-wing aircraft.
Ding Ding Ding Ding Ding! When all you have for CAS are fast airplanes from a different department of the DoD that can loiter on station for less than 1/2 hour rotary wing CAS looks a LOT better. If the Army could operate it's own Fixed Wing Aircraft for CAS and such it would look a lot like.... the Marines. Maybe it's not such a bad thing they can't. (Who wants wanna be Marines? When you need Marines only the real deal will do, no someone who learned how to fold socks in Basic.)
First they came for Seawolf, and no one raised the alarm, for we knew the Soviet submarines were inferior.
Then they came for Crusader, for we knew that the battle field of the future would have no place for artillery.
Then they came for Comanche, for we knew that the future battlefield would be observed by drones.
When they came for Osprey we knew that our Marines could maintain antique helicopters better than anyone in the world.
When they came for Raptor we saw that the Eagle would always triumph over Sukhoi, even as the airframes passed the pilots in age.
And when the military was transformed, into a light nimble counter-terrorism and peacekeeper force the hordes of the Red Army descended on Taiwan and we realized our mistake, but there was none to counter them.
I never realied it until you mentioned it, but Jeff Daniels would be a PERFECT Zaphod. I though Bruce Campbel upthread, and he'd do really well, but transfer some of that 'Dude' into Zaphod and it'd be Movie Gold! Two heads drinking white russians, oh yes, this would be too good!
I just want to scream. Yes, I'm something of a font/type geek. But still, who in the name of John Hancock decided to write legally binding documents in a non-monospaced font??!!? Yes I know that serifs are easier to read, there are serifs in courier. By making this a proportional font they're actually making these documents HARDER to edit! Everything I've EVER submitted for publication to an editor (a very very small sample mind you) has been courier 12, double spaced. Why? It's easier to edit that way!
Grrr. Who gave the government desktop publishing tools anyway? The next thing you know they'll start sending out newsletters in 'Chicago'.
See here's the problem. 10 point at 96 DPI and 10 point at 72 DPI *SHOULD* be the same thing, point does *NOT* equal pixel, that's a common fallicy propogated by Microsoft. Points are Points, there are 72 of them in an inch. Points are NOT pixels!
So to answer your question. No, 12 point is the accepted standard for most communication. Unfortunately since the majority of computers in the world render points incorrectly '10 point' has become a defacto, and typographically incorrect, standard.
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Okay, it's late, but...
Pay him no mind, he hated LOTR because it was such ligher fare than the Silmarillion. If Tolkien hadn't sold out to the Publishers we'd be reading all of his works in their original Quenya.
Faster Than the Speed of Light just came out on paperback and is a good read AND a good intro to cosmology.
The End of Time is also available in paperback. I never managed to get though more than 4 chapters, but Barbour has some very intriguing ideas about time, and I've seen him mentioned along with Loop Quantum Gravity, which is a good sign.
Hyperspace was written before TEU, and suffers from age a bit. It was written before Witten unleashed M-Theory on everyone (or just after) I read it immediately after TEU so I bored me, the rehash of Relativity and QM can get a bit tedious in these books unless you spice it up like Greene does.
Three Roads to Quantum Gravity looks promising, and details String Theory's main competitor on the Quantum Gravity front, Loop Quantum Gravity. I picked it up, but couldn't get into it.
I've read Hawking and a few others, but I've never been able to get into things from the 'classical' side of the equasion. Feynman is REALLY difficut to get into, his prose just doesn't flow like Greene's. Perhaps I'm a mass consumer and so esoteric physisits don't appeal to me as authors.
Yes there is new ground covered in TFOTC, specifically more coverage of the 'braneworld' theory of strings, a large secton on cosmology, inflation, and what that means, as well as a section at the end detailing a little bit of what the future holds and the possibility for experimental evidence of string theory. For me this didn't amount to much more than what I'd already read in 'Faster than the Speed of Light' and Scientific American, but it was good to have it in context. Some of the stuff on quantum mechanics was also better than TEU.
For me it was worth the buy, but as I stated I'm a physics geek. (And I could pick it up at my local B&N)
Actually... should the universe eventually be saturated with entropy how could time flow? There's no need for a big crunch, but if the universe reaches a level of disorder saturation (such as Black Holes do) would time continue to flow? It would continue to exist of course, as the past is immutable, but would it still flow at maximum entropy?
Yes and no. You could think of this as "The Elegant Universe" Rev 2. It is dumbed down a bit (not terribly) but I think it more comes from Greene refining his delivery than from deliberately appealing to a lower intellect. If you don't like thinking about Bart Simpson racing a beam of light it's not for you. Real stick up brainiacs might see the alegories that Greene uses as 'dumbing down', but I find them amusing and a good way to suck geeks into his world.
Hrm... Possibly. This is, in many ways a lighter read when it comes to M/String theory, not delving so deeply into Kalabi-Yau transformations and the other of Green's work. If you're looking for more in-depth on Strings this might not be the work for you.
It's a better overview than TEU was, Green's prose is more refined, but the level of the target audience is lower as well.
I think the point is valid though. A tractor is a tractor is a tractor. Just like we're still using a mouse to point to icons on a screen. At that level the analogy works. Computing really hasn't changed much in the last 20 years. Yeah Apple was the first to do the whole Mouse/GUI thing, but there's been no real change to that paradigm since the first Mac.
(from http://www.dmin.net/entropy/archives/000286.html)
This is an open letter to all the friends and family that back me into corners at family gatherings, or try to call me late in the evening seeking help with a computer problem. Do us both a big favor and go buy a Mac.
When a member of 'the family' knows something about a technical subject the rest of the family turns to that person for advice. I can accept that. I have no problem offering advice. I have watched my father diplomatically give advice on automobiles (he is a mechanic) for more than thirty years now. Yes, sometimes you can get some free service; it all depends on the schmoozing. The best line I ever learned from my father is: "Sounds like it really needs some work, bring it by the shop tomorrow and I'll be happy to look at it." The connotation here being that he'll work on it at work. That usually throws the cheapskates off.
I don't fix personal computers for a living or I'd use the same line. I'm a System Administrator, and while servicing desktop windows machines is part of my job on occasion, for the most part I deal with large servers and institutional workstations, i.e. not something that has the latest version of 'Deer Hunter' on it. Even so, yes I CAN work on PC's, however, I work on computers all day long and really would prefer to NOT do that all night as well. Well, okay, so I'd prefer to work on my OWN computer at night.
Make both of our lives easier, as well as help me deal with those embarrassing pauses in conversation at family functions and buy yourself a Mac rather than a PC. I guarantee you'll be happier and if you have problems I'll be more willing to help you.
You see, what the sales person at Dell, or Best Buy, or CompUSA isn't telling you is what you get with that wonderfully less expensive PC. They don't tell you about the mountains of marginally compatible or functioning software. They don't tell you about the flood of Internet spyware programs that are out there that will make your PC unstable. They don't tell you about the legion of virus writers out there, right now, that want to turn your nice, inexpensive PC into a gateway for unsolicited e-mail. They don't tell you about the bouncing around you'll get from the manufacturer about support.
Yes, it is true that Macs cost more than the el-cheapo special at Best Buy. It's also true that in three years you can sell your Mac for a reasonable sum on EBay, while you won't be able to donate the PC to your schools because it's so out of date. Yes it's true that there's less of a selection of software for Macs, but how many $10 software titles that aren't worth the CD's their printed on do you need? Yes, Macs don't have the breadth of games available, but if you're buying a computer based solely on the availability of games wouldn't you be better off buying an XBox? Yes, maybe even Macs are a bit slower, but you don't buy a Corvette and drive at 120 miles per hour do you? What do you need with that speed? As long as it keeps up with you what's the issue?
Here's the thing, I know it's been said before, but it can't be stressed enough, Macs just work. Do you have any idea the hoops you have to jump through to get a slightly out of date, or a slightly ahead of it's time piece of equipment working with Windows? It can be a nightmare. With a Mac, as long as you've bought something that says it will work with a Mac, you just plug it in and go. Unless your children are going to be Computer Scientists there's no real reason that they HAVE to HAVE a PC at home. 'Because that's what the schools use,' is not a good excuse. Do you know WHY the schools use PC's? Because Dell gives them a BIG discount and schmooze the school administrators.
So if after all of this you still feel like you need to buy that Best Buy el-cheapo job I'll give you this last bit of advice: Add in the cost of a Linksys firewall, the latest Norton Anti-Virus (remember that that anti-virus cost is a YEARLY fee), the hours of frustration you're g
The other quesion that this all raises is - what makes you think that this is ANY different than all the sysadmins who love linux/unix and have done so for years?
First, yes there are SysAdmins that swear by Linux on Intel. I know several. They spend time tinkering with their set-up to get it 'just right' have spam assassin and proc mail and a bajillion other little things that they 'have' to have. No question.
However, I also know SysAdmins that could give a rip about dealing with all of Linux's little gotchas. Sleep and network handeling (after sleep) come immediately to mind. Bottom line, as has been stated MANY times before... Linux beats everything for TCO if you time is worthless. Try installing an RSS reader on Linux, you've either got to go through the configure, make, make install hastle, or find the RPM, make sure you're libraries are up to date and install from there. If you're really lucky you can just emerge the package and pooft there it is. Try it on a Mac. Double click the installer, drag from disk image to hard drive. Done. How do you uninstall it? Drag it to the trash.
The value in Macs isn't in the hardware (though the quietness of the G5 is very impressive) it's in the OS. There's power under there, but for the most part you don't HAVE to pull back the covers to get something to work. *THAT'S* the segment that the Mac is making inroads with in the Technoarti realm. The people, like me, that say: "I work on computers all day long, I fight with vendors and libraries, and users. I want a machine that *JUST WORKS*, I don't want to fuck around with sendmail.cf on my own fuckin' laptop!
You'd be surprised how many SysAdmins (the Elders I'm thinking) have this view.
The question that market analysts don't seem to be asking is what segments of the market is Apple growing in?
I've seen Apple making headways into the SysAdmin space. Not as servers (though XRaid perhaps will) but as personal workstations. Just this week two die hard Sun and VMS people have decided that their next workstations should be Macs. Replacing Sun Stations.
*This* is the important bit that is getting glossed over. Apple is making inroads with the Technoarti in companies. UNIX Sysadmins at the top of the totem pole have been crying for a UNIX laptop for years and now Apple is giving it to them. One Java developer recently quoted in JDJ remarked: "I use a Mac, it's like Linux with class and QA." (or something close to)
Macs are quickly becoming the status symbols of the technical shamans in the backroom. It's not hard to imagine that from there the jump to the CIO and the board room is not far off.
This is what looking at gross marketshare misses. Apple is front-loading the desire for Macs in IT. If they can couple it at the right time (once they've penetrated into the SysAdmin/CIO segment) with inexpensive corporate-type desktops... the world could change quickly.
If Apple can appeal on the resilience to worms/viruses and bring TCO value to corporations the future is bright.
Excuse me? This could be GREAT! Think about it. If this catches on (which I dubious about considdering how well IPV6 took off) the upgrade cost will go into the pockets of companies like Cisco and Nortel, and the physical/virtual change over will be done by people carrying new switches/routers and deploying new servers to run on this network, not farmed out to comanies half a world away.
Let's hope they succeed. This could do for CCNE's what y2k did for Cobal programmers.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but I wear headphones in cube-land because all of the other conversations going on around me are distracting, especially the ones in foreign languages.
Background noise pulls at attention, at least it does for me. Now, I have been known to listen to 'pink' noise instead of music just to drown out the conversations. This actually works better than Music often times, but is just hell on my mild tinitus.
I think the anti-social aspects are a bit over played as well. Ask the people you see wearing headphones in the office, or in public if they are extaverts or intraverts. I would bet a small sum of money that the majority of people that are 'enhansing their personal space' are introverts. I, as an introvert, don't see anything wrong with this. We are not flawed because we are anti-social, we are just different.
PREACH IT BORTHA! As someone who has slowly been sucked into supporting FinApps (Er... E-Business Suite) I finally figured out what that smell was when I dug into iAS. FinApps isn't a pile of mud. It's a pile of... nitrogen rich mud.
Ummmm.... Super-Weapons utilizing untested systems like say... Apache, or the Abrahms? Like the Falcon? Untested Superweapons like the M-16?
None of these were incremental improvements over their predesesors. Apache's helmet mounted sighting system was glitchy in the beginning, the optics were as well. Abrahms was the first MBT to utilize a turbine engine, the second to use Cobham reactive armor, and the sighting and stabilization system was new as well. Falcon was the first 'Electric jet' in production and the flight control systems were a little jittery, and the flight stick it self (originally a 'force stick') had to be redesigned to move. The M-16 was the development of Eugene Stoner that used a smaller round than the US Army wanted and suffered from inferior powder in early production models, as well as jamming and fowling do to issues with the chamber (and the powder).
All of these weapons systems took some risks and perservered. They weren't incrementally better than their predesessors, they were significanly improved through the use of untested systems.
We see what incremental change gets us. It gets us Apache Longbow, it gets us Strike Eagle. It gets us the M-60 (MBT) it gets us the M-16A2. Yes, they're all better than their predesessors, but they don't represent the paradigm shift that the base models did. Commanche promised to do for Attack/Scout Helicopters what the M1 did for Main Battle Tanks. Instead we're stuck with the M1A2 of helicopter gunships for the forseeable future, all the while the airframes continue to accumulate hours at an unprescedented rate.
I've learned to support Rummy on his grand transformation vision, but it's getting a little hard to stomache while the air-frames and equipment that the greatest military in the world uses to protect us turns into museum pieces.
Probably the whole reason the Army ever came up with attack helicopters is that they are forbidden to operate fixed-wing aircraft.
Ding Ding Ding Ding Ding! When all you have for CAS are fast airplanes from a different department of the DoD that can loiter on station for less than 1/2 hour rotary wing CAS looks a LOT better. If the Army could operate it's own Fixed Wing Aircraft for CAS and such it would look a lot like.... the Marines. Maybe it's not such a bad thing they can't. (Who wants wanna be Marines? When you need Marines only the real deal will do, no someone who learned how to fold socks in Basic.)
First they came for Seawolf, and no one raised the alarm, for we knew the Soviet submarines were inferior.
Then they came for Crusader, for we knew that the battle field of the future would have no place for artillery.
Then they came for Comanche, for we knew that the future battlefield would be observed by drones.
When they came for Osprey we knew that our Marines could maintain antique helicopters better than anyone in the world.
When they came for Raptor we saw that the Eagle would always triumph over Sukhoi, even as the airframes passed the pilots in age.
And when the military was transformed, into a light nimble counter-terrorism and peacekeeper force the hordes of the Red Army descended on Taiwan and we realized our mistake, but there was none to counter them.
Doh, wrong actor. BRIDGES, I meant Bridges!
I never realied it until you mentioned it, but Jeff Daniels would be a PERFECT Zaphod. I though Bruce Campbel upthread, and he'd do really well, but transfer some of that 'Dude' into Zaphod and it'd be Movie Gold! Two heads drinking white russians, oh yes, this would be too good!
You're cracked. Bruce is obviously Zaphod!
Come on. If you want a comptuer for a narrator there's only one person I can think of that really sounds like a Narrator.
I just want to scream. Yes, I'm something of a font/type geek. But still, who in the name of John Hancock decided to write legally binding documents in a non-monospaced font??!!? Yes I know that serifs are easier to read, there are serifs in courier. By making this a proportional font they're actually making these documents HARDER to edit! Everything I've EVER submitted for publication to an editor (a very very small sample mind you) has been courier 12, double spaced. Why? It's easier to edit that way!
Grrr. Who gave the government desktop publishing tools anyway? The next thing you know they'll start sending out newsletters in 'Chicago'.
See here's the problem. 10 point at 96 DPI and 10 point at 72 DPI *SHOULD* be the same thing, point does *NOT* equal pixel, that's a common fallicy propogated by Microsoft. Points are Points, there are 72 of them in an inch. Points are NOT pixels!
So to answer your question. No, 12 point is the accepted standard for most communication. Unfortunately since the majority of computers in the world render points incorrectly '10 point' has become a defacto, and typographically incorrect, standard.
Kinda Neo-con to ex-con 'eh? I like it.
It's the vaxPod! Oh the irony.
that's 25 racks of machines full. It's not just cooling and power it's floor space.